The Chicago market was a broadband vacuum when Comcast entered in 2002 via purchasing AT&T Cable in 2002 and they were immediately overwhelmed. They found a market where Ameritech (then SBC) had almost no DSL available throughout the entire Chicago area, the handful of former CLEC's that had offered it had largely gone belly-up. There were no broadband alternatives but Comcast HSI for most.

When we ordered Comcast HSI in late 2003 and it was taking three weeks for an install. The installer told us new HSI orders were coming in at a rate of 1,500~3,000 per day in this market alone. As a result Comcast had to continually reduce speeds. Our former excite@home 10/1 market, speeds went down to 3/512k, then 1/256k as Comcast was scrambling to accomodate the growth. DNS outages & peak time slowdowns were a daily occurrence here.

Comcast finally got things on track after huge capacity and provisioning (Bedrock) upgrades throughout the mid-late 2000's got them caught up. Things are much better for sure, but it was a rough ride and Chicago is still Comcast's largest market.

They share chicago with rcn, I would be surprised if chicago is actually comcasts biggest market area. Phillie used to be there biggest market and they didnt share it with anyone. They do share it with fios now tho so who knows. Im pretty sure LA has comcast and i would expect LA To be the biggest now since fios came to phillie.

They share chicago with rcn, I would be surprised if chicago is actually comcasts biggest market area. Phillie used to be there biggest market and they didnt share it with anyone. They do share it with fios now tho so who knows. Im pretty sure LA has comcast and i would expect LA To be the biggest now since fios came to phillie.

Comcast has a much smaller presence in the L.A. area than in the Bay Area. Time Warner and Charter are the biggies there.--